Tuesday!

Another quiet day with the family.  Nothing of interest to report.

Tomorrow morning I catch a flight at 7:15am in Geneva and get back to Seattle at 4:15pm.  Seems like a short time, but it's actually 18 hours of travel...

Paula will be staying in Monnaz for another 3 weeks.

Au revoir!

Quiet Day

A trip to Morges to run some errands.  Lunch in a sidewalk cafe (crepes and salads) and home to rest from the exertions...  Vacationing...

Around Morges

Today was an expedition to the town of Morges on Lake Geneva just 5 minutes from Ahriel, Nicole, and Teo's home in Monnaz.  It was noted that field trips like this are now more of a challenge.  We ended up in two cars - Paula, Nicole, Teo and me in one and Ahriel and Malibu and the stroller in the other.  All went well.

When we arrived in Morges we discovered that the tulips were in full flower.  Amazing colors everywhere!   With the temperature in the 70s and the sun shining, lots of people from the town were also strolling around the gardens next to the lake.  Here are a few photos:

Click on the photos to make them full size.

Here are Paula, Malibu, Nicole, Teo, and Ahriel:

After wandering through the flowers and strolling along Lake Geneva we stopped at a tent selling sausages and hot dogs with picnic tables overlooking the lake and mountains on the far (French) side.  Perfect!

The "hotdogs" were pretty unique.   Instead of a hotdog and a bun they had a large sausage and a baguette (a loaf of french bread) cut into several large sections.  The piece of the baguette was then stabbed onto a spike and the sausage pushed inside - it would be sticking out of one end if the baguette piece was an end piece and you could see the sausage on both ends of the baguette for the middle slices (I hope that makes sense...).  Here's a photo of the mechanism that they used to stab the baguette (you can see that an end chunk of a baguette has been stabbed on the spike on the right and hot dogs are waiting in the center heated container)...

 Malibu also had fun chasing sticks and rocks in Lake Geneva - here Ahriel the Daredevil climbs down the rocks to find a good fetching stick for Malibu.

We stopped to buy some bread at a bakery.  This being Sunday almost all of the shops in town were closed.  Cafes and restaurants were mostly open and a few small bakeries or grocery stores.   But the big stores - department stores, large grocery stores, hardware stores, garden stores, etc. are all closed on Sundays.  Very different from in the United States.

On our way back to the car we passed yesterday's market street.  Today it was deserted:

Market Day! Le Jour du Marche!

The nearby town of Morges has their weekly farmer's market on Saturday mornings.  Paula, Nicole, and I headed down to the market to buy some necessities...

The market takes place in the middle of town on their "walking street" - one of the great things about Europe is that many of the towns have a street blocked off full time for walking.  No cars.  These streets are usually filled with small shops, cafes and small hotels.  The walking street in Morges is no exception.

We strolled down the street, stopped at a sidewalk cafe for a coffee and watched the people pass by.  In the end we had a couple shopping bags filled with flowers, vegetables (lettuce, tomatoes, and green beans), French soap, and olives.

Here are some photos from the market:

CLICK ON THE PHOTOS FOR A LARGER VEIW!

MUSHROOMS!

The Dump - "La Dechetterie"

I know that many of you spent a sleepless night in anticipation of the Tale of the Dump - Le Conte de la Dechetterie.  Well, it was a night well spent!  Here's the blow by blow recount of the experience...

Down in Ahriel and Nicole's storage area are bins for all the various types of recyclable items.  First order of business was adding the current crop of recycle items from the kitchen.  Then, as you can see from Ahriel's victorious posture, we were confident of eventually getting everything in it's place.

The bins were easy to work with - each having a flip top so that items could be sorted in advance to make things much easier at the recycle drop-off area.  Eventually we got all the bins in Ahriel's Subaru Forester and headed off for the recyclers.

Then the excitement really hit a crescendo!  There were many people from the local communities dropping things off in the huge bins.  The area is only open for a few hours twice a week - so it's a real community event.  The first area was for dropping off compostable items (we had none) and then there was a big pile of the final compost available for gardens.  We drove past them and parked with a bunch of other cars for the Separation of Items(tm).

Ours were pretty much straight forward.  Paper here, cardboard there, glass bottles (depending on color of glass in separate bins), and plastic bottles (they are called "PET" for some reason) in their own bin with the caps in the neighboring bin.

There were a few surprises for me - but probably they should have been expected.  For instance:











Corks from wine bottles!












Capsules from the very popular coffee machines.

Eventually we had everything in their right bins and we headed back home with the knowledge of a job well done.

Tomorrow!

Here's a preview of coming attractions:

Tomorrow we'll be going to the dump to drop off all of the recyclables and also to the farmer's market in Morges - the town on Lake Geneva.

Teo Jackson Povich

The main reason for our trip to Switzerland is to meet our new grandson Teo.  Here's a photo of the little guy (and me - I'm the one holding him if you can't tell the difference).  Teo was born 3 1/2 weeks ago and was seven weeks premature.  He's left his four pound birthweight behind with sleeping, making baby noises, waving his arms and putting on weight being his four main activities right now.  He's just a couple ounces short of five pounds right now.

He's doing great and it's been fun to see the little guy.

The Neighborhood

After 11 hours of sleep last night I got up around 8am for a stroll through the neighborhood.  Here are some of the highlights...

It seems like every time we visit Ahriel and Nicole they are living in a different house - and we've enjoyed the variety!  The first two were mountain chalets near Gryon at the far end of Lake Geneva.  The current apartment is much less mountainous and is located in a small village with farms and vineyards all around.  The countryside is much more open and rolling with mountains in the distance.

This morning I decided to get out and see the neighborhood.

Switzerland is filled with walking trails - they're everywhere.  They go along small farmer's roads in the countryside, through vineyards, along streams in the woods, through towns and villages.  The trails get marked with yellow signs that give a destination and the approximate time it takes to reach that destination. Here's a sample signpost.  The times are rumored to be determined by associations of senior hikers to be sure that the times are realistic for everyone.  In my experience, I might not be up to the activity level of an average senior Swiss hiker - the times always seem a bit optimistic compared to my pace...


So this morning I headed over to the chateau that's across the ravine from Nicole's apartment.  It's only 15 minutes away (according to your average retired Swiss hiker) but does include a long stairway down to the stream and then an equally long one up to the chateau (see the photo at the left).  There were birds chirping everywhere, the morning was sunny and warm (I was walking in a short sleeved shirt and very comfortable - unlike the current weather in Seattle...).  A beautiful morning for a walk.

As I got closer to the chateau I was able to see details a bit clearer - the walls are massive, the outbuildings numerous and the place looks in good shape but totally deserted.  There was a no trespassing sign.  I didn't trespass.

There's a small village around the chateau that was nice, but not really interesting.  One very fancy restaurant and that was apparently the only going business in town.  That's similar to Monnaz where we have a winery that also sells bread on Friday's from 4-7pm.  That's it for commerce.  The closest real cafe or restaurant or grocery store is about five minutes away in Morges (on Lake Geneva - we'll be going there tomorrow for the Saturday farmer's market).

I circled through the village around the chateau and then headed back to the same long stairways to return home.  Here are some photos from the trip:

Greetings from Monnaz, Switzerland!

After an exhausting trip from Seattle to Geneva (with a stop in Amsterdam) Paula and I have arrived at Nicole and Ahriel's apartment in Monnaz, Switzerland - near Laussane.

The highlight of the flight was leaving Amsterdam 30 minutes late due to a bird having attacked the plane on a previous flight and damaged an access panel on the plane's nose. Technical experts had to be called and eventually they expressed a hope that the plane would make it to Geneva. The one hour flight was uneventful until the pilot suddenly pulled it out of the landing approach at the last minute and we zoomed up into the sky over Geneva. Oh, oh. Turns out that the aborted landing had nothing to do with the damaged nose panel but everything to do with a plane that was tardy leaving the landing strip ahead of us. On his second try, the landing was fine.

Here's a photo of my current writing desk on Nicole's balcony. That's the castle of Vufflens in the background. We're surrounded by vinyards and had wine from a local winery with dinner last night. Delicious.

Paula, Nicole and I took Malibu the wonderdog and Teo the wonderkid out for a walk in the afternoon (partly for the exercise and mostly to try to stay awake until a reasonable hour to combat the jet lag). Along the trip we came across a mushroom - a verpa, similar to a morel but usually not eaten. I'm always on the lookout for tasty mushrooms...

After a delicious homemade Pad Thai we headed for bed satisfied with the 8pm bedtime (29 hours since awaking in Seattle to start the epic adventure!).